


statement of keisha taylor

by lesbiagnes



Category: Alice Isn't Dead (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, bro idk how to tag this, it's what it says on the tin, jon is still a bastard man, keisha and martin are friends because i said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 00:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20921477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiagnes/pseuds/lesbiagnes
Summary: Statement of Keisha Taylor, regarding her journey across America to find her wife.





	statement of keisha taylor

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd so please tell me if there are any mistakes/formatting errors because i wrote half of this at 2am hahahaha
> 
> (also mayhaps i'll make this a series/chaptered thing ??? i mean i have a vague plan that could work but who knows ???)

“Statement of Keisha Taylor, regarding her journey across America to find her wife. Statement taken directly from subject.”

The archivist was looking at her expectantly. They were sat across from each other, both of them leaning on the creaking wooden desk, but the archivist was further forward, balancing most his upper body weight onto his elbows. The shadow that was plastered on the wall behind him wasn’t human, contorting in ways that a skeleton shouldn’t allow. He should be dead. His eyes looked dead. _Everything _about that man pointed towards a coffin and a grave, and yet his heart kept beating and his chest moving up and down.

It made Keisha’s skin crawl.

She’d come here to find Martin, not to give a statement, but the archivist had cornered her as soon as she entered the old building. She’d stopped for a second to take in the intricate patterns on the ceiling, and to look at the bookshelves, when the archivist had emerged from his office to speak to her and dragged her into the office. She couldn’t even remember their conversation.

Keisha Taylor, the woman who could recall every tiny detail of the past ten years of her life couldn’t remember an interaction between two people that happened ten minutes ago.

She glanced back at the archivist. His gaze hadn’t wavered once. Keisha cleared her throat and started.

“It’s funny the things people do for love. I understand that humans are social animals, so it makes sense for us to want to share our life with others, to give into the urge of love that is buried in all of us. But, in the name of self-preservation, does love really make sense? You’re handing your life and your wellbeing over to someone else. How much of it you give varies from person to person, but you always give some. The people that give the most argue that relationships better you as a person, and if you don’t give one hundred per cent, what’s the point?

“I mean, I once heard that a guy bought out a whole theme park just so he and his girlfriend could be alone on the rides, and while that’s cute, it probably ruined some kids’ day because they couldn’t go to the theme park. Love makes people selfish.

“I don’t think I was selfish. I travelled across America searching for a woman that I didn’t know would love me by the end of it. There was no room to be selfish.

“My wife, Alice, disappeared a few years ago. At the time, I thought she was dead. Looking back, it made no sense to believe that, but then again, neither does the truth. I went to every therapy group you can imagine; I sat in circles and explained everything in vivid detail. The nightmares. The tears. The darkness. I told them everything I could in a hope it would make living easier. It turns out, that was all for nothing.

“I saw her in the back of crowd while I was watching tv. I can’t even remember what had happened. Was it a murder? A kidnapping? Either way it didn’t matter because my dead wife was lurking at the back of a group of people looking straight at me. I thought I had lost my mind, and maybe it was just a lookalike, but I became obsessed with finding her again. I watched every 24-hour news channel there was; I searched for her in every crowd. Sometimes she was there. Sometimes she wasn’t. Either way, the places that she showed up in became my map of America, and that’s how it all really started.”

Keisha paused for a moment to glance at the archivist’s face. He seemed interested, not in her or her story but something else entirely. She continued to speak.

“The first strange incidence was with an omelet. More specifically, with the man, or thing, eating the omelet.

“I was in a diner in a gas station, or whatever you guys call it over here, and across the room I saw a man eating an omelet. But, and here’s the thing, he wasn’t _just _eating the omelet. He was _devouring _it, as if he’d just trekked up Mount Everest and hadn’t seen food for the past 57 hours, and his eyes never left mine as he bit and chewed and swallowed this omelet. His nails were a sickly yellow colour, with a matching yellow hat, and a dirty polo shirt with the word “thistle” scrawled in the corner.

“After a moment, he approached my table, and his walk was _not _human, that’s for sure, his legs and arms were all floppy like a plastic bag in the wind. And the way he spoke wasn’t right either. It was all mangled and so far away from anything I’d ever heard before, as if he was trying to talk through a hurricane. He spoke about danger and death and he said he wanted to show me something funny. I should have run then.

“He ate someone. That’s the only way I can describe it. He grabbed a random guy from a random table, and dragged him outside the diner, and he bared his teeth, which were just as, if not more, yellow than his fingernails, all decayed and mangled, though I suppose dental care is hard when you eat people. They stared at me. Both of them. Their eyes were fixed on me as if I was their tether to this shitty world. Imagine that. Me, being the thing that held that god awful creature to this planet. Might sound daft but that’s what it feels like. Even now.

“The guy’s name was Earl by the way. Not that it means anything to you, or me really, but even if you do get eaten by some evil monster, you still deserve the same respect as everyone else. Earl didn’t move the whole time; he couldn’t move. They just stared at me. Their eyes were flat and empty and lifeless and that’s when I climbed back into my truck and drove. I saw them in my mirror, of course I did, but what was I meant to do?

“Anyway, that was just the beginning of these Thistle man sightings. I saw him on roadsides, in diners, in toilets, in bars. He never spoke to me, and I never spoke to him. I wasn’t interested in engaging with the Thistle man.

“Besides, that’s not what I came here to talk to Martin about. No, I want to talk about what happened in the next town I visited.

“I was in Charlatan. I’d never heard of it until I was there, but it was a decent town with cafes, gas stations, old men crossing the road, and a motel. It felt like time stopped there though, as if the world had moved on and forgotten about this little town nestled in the heart of America. I took note of certain things: a girl pumping gas into a pickup truck, a woman yelling at her son as they leave the motel, the old man looking at me as he crosses the road. Normal. That’s what it was. But what happened to me there wasn’t normal.

“I continued a few hours down the highway, trying to get out of Charlatan and find my _goddamn wife. _And yet, as I pulled up to a stoplight, I noticed something: I was back in Charlatan. Same girl, same motel, same old man. There was something off though. For starters, it was darker, and not in a light or a time context, it was just darker. The pickup truck was covered in mud, the roads were covered in mud and the gardens on the front of the houses were bogs. Everyone was looking somewhere else. The girl had her face pressed to the side of her truck, the woman and her son had their faces pressed to the door, and the old man was pressed into the pole of the streetlight. No one moved.

“I needed to get out of Charlatan. I _tried _to get out of Charlatan. The third time I was there it was so much worse. The fire was everywhere. There was no heat, just the burning of houses and the gas station and the motel. The old man was on fire too, and he crossed the street, stopped dead in front of my truck, and screamed at me. I saw it. I saw the fire burning within him. I saw his insides on fire. I watched as his skin melted, like something straight out of a low budget horror film. I drove as fast as a truck that size would allow, down the highway and out of there, trying to erase the image of a man burning alive from behind my eyelids. Of course I didn’t leave, even though I travelled down the highway for miles and all the signs I passed showed that I was leaving Charlatan, of course I couldn’t leave Charlatan that time.

“The fourth time I was back in Charlatan I expected it. Everything was new, but not Ikea new. More like another-coat-of-paint new. They were crying and they were watching me, and I turned, and the old man was in my truck next to me and tears were streaming down his face. I wasn’t even shocked. It’s funny how quickly humans can adapt to strange situations – what happened wasn’t even close to the realms of normal, but my brain never registered it as shocking, I guess. I suppose it was a good thing, otherwise I would have shut down completely and maybe I’d still be trapped there. Sure, I was scared, and I was barely biting back tears, but I wasn’t surprised or shocked.

“The old man, the one who’d was waiting the cross the road, the one who was one fire, the one who was next to me in my truck, gave me a vague gesture towards the road. It wasn’t even close to being descriptive, but I drove, same way down that same highway for the same number of miles. At some point he disappeared from the passenger seat of my truck, but I wasn’t paying attention. I left Charlatan that time.

“I think it was Alice who did that. I don’t know how, but I think she gave it to me as a warning. It was probably a warning I should have listened to. Sometimes, I wish I would have. But what is love if not stubborn sometimes? She knew me better than anyone. She knew those things wouldn’t hold me back. But she tried anyway. And I don’t know whether that says more about me or her.”

Keisha risked a look back up at the man opposite her.

“Is that it?” He asked.

“No.” Keisha took a deep breath. “But that’s all you’re getting for now.”

The archivist frowned, “What do you mean?”

“I need to find Martin,” Keisha said, standing up and grabbing her bad off the floor. “And, unless you can help with that, I’ll be taking my leave now.”

He didn’t even acknowledge she’d spoken, just stared down at his desk as if it was something more than wood and pen marks. Keisha studied him for a moment; he didn’t _seem _angry. His eyebrows were pulled together but in a contemplative way, and his hands weren’t balled up at his sides like Alice’s would be, and his jaw wasn’t set like Alice’s would be, and his eyes weren’t dark like Alice’s would be. He was a strange constellation of a man, made up of skin and rigid bones and too much time and experience.

Maybe she should have listened to Martin’s silence and never left America.

Keisha’s hand was resting on the door handle when the archivist spoke.

“If you find Martin, let me know.”

She turned back to him, and saw him leaning back in the creaking chair, his face and eyes and hands and skin a jumbled mess of words and emotions; not excited, not anticipating something, not confused, but something else entirely. He was overwhelming.

Keisha nodded, and stepped out the room.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter (@sylviatillys and @lesbiagnes) and on tumblr (@ensigntilly) !!


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